Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
When Vicki Bauer and Desiree Barringer step onto the stage at Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City May 10, they’ll be there to show off the results of six months of intensive workouts at Steelhead Strength and Fitness gym in Sweet Home.
Bauer, 40, and Barringer, 28, have been working since October to compete in the 2008 National Physique Committee (NPC) Bodybuilding.com Oregon Ironman Championships, the largest in the state, where they intend to demonstrate the fitness they’ve acquired through natural techniques. They will join five other women, from gyms in Brownsville, Lebanon and Albany, who will represent Steelhead at the event.
In a sport where many competitors rely heavily on steroids and other unnatural supplements, Bauer said she’s determined to show that she can compete without going down that road. As a personal trainer, she said, she refuses to work with clients unless they are drug-free.
“Iron Man and several other competitions are natural,” she said. “It’s an unfair advantage to be natural and compete against someone on steroids.”
This will be Bauer’s fourth competition; her first was in 2002 and she’s placed first in one of those.
To prepare, she and Barringer spent the first three months bulking up, eating a diet heavy in protein and doing heavy weight training, “building as much muscle as we can,” she said. Then they spent the next three months doing more aerobic exercise, cutting weight, eating a mixture of protein and “the right kind of calories” so as to be able to lose pounds without jeopardizing muscle tone.
They work out six days a week, doing four hours of cardio exercises and four hours of weight lifting over that time.
Barringer, said that, like Bauer, she’s been involved in sports – both played high school volleyball, basketball and softball – but she’s never experienced anything like this. Not even when she worked as a firefighter, which she did until she had her son 14 months ago.
“I’m honestly in the best shape I’ve ever been in – even in high school,” she said.
She said the biggest eye-opener for her has been how important proper nutrition is to weight loss.
“I used to exercise quite a bit and I only ate two or three times a day, and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t lose weight,” she said last week as she worked out on a stair machine.
Once she got into bodybuilding, she changed her eating habits